Trainers

Alastair Lough, and Patricia Proulx-Lough, were the first two official Transition Trainers in the US, and are pioneers of the Transition Movement in the US. Early in his career, Alastair served as a professional facilitator for Corning, assisting small workgroups in problem solving problems of their choosing. More recently, he has worked as a professional Hydrogeologist, addressing issues of groundwater remediation and water supply. In 2008, Alastair completed a doctorate in Natural Resources, in which he addressed issues of long-term water-resource conservation for the benefit of future populations. Keenly aware of climate change, peak oil and the possibility of economic crisis, he has since chosen to promote the Transition Model in the US and abroad as an innovative approach for communities to directly tackle these issues. Alastair is a permaculturist, a facilitator for the Awakening the Dreamer Symposium and cofounder of the Transition Training Center in Portland ME.

Beverly (Pitzer) Markiewicz stumbled into the Transition Handbook at a local bookstore in 2009 while also immersing herself in the Permaculture Design Course in her home city of San Francisco. She was already concerned about the issues of Climate Change and passionate about responsible stewardship of our natural resources, and becoming involved with Transition San Francisco's initiating group in 2009 provided Beverly with a community of people working towards the same goals. Beverly continues to be actively involved in the TransitionSF's steering committee and in Transition Northern California's regional conference. In addition to her involvement in Transition, Beverly is the Local Clean Energy Alliance intern with the Oakland based non-profit, Bay Localize. In this role, Beverly coordinates the Clean Energy & Jobs Oakland campaign with the goal of establishing a community choice energy program in the East Bay that provides benefits to the community such as good, clean jobs, competitive utility rates, and reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Beverly is also the founder of a new video production organization called Tree Ring Productions that provides strategy, filming, and editing for crowdfunding campaign videos and other awareness videos for grassroots organizations and individual change makers.

Dakota Butterfield is a member and organizer of JPNET (Jamaica Plain New Economy Transition), a Transition initiative based in a richly-diverse neighborhood of Boston. She holds a certificate in Sustainable Design and Green Building from the Boston Architectural College and worked at The Green Roundtable in Boston planning educational programming for architects, engineers and contractors looking to “green” their practice. Her work as a consultant and trainer with non-profits and cooperatives spanned twenty years as she guided groups towards more effective democratic management and improved strategic outcomes. As an extension of her work with non-profits and cooperatives, she taught for over fifteen years in Tufts University’s graduate-level UEP program (Urban Environmental Policy), and for over a decade in the masters program in Community Economic Development at New Hampshire College. In addition, she has extensive experience with direct action and protest campaigns, having played a central role in Boston’s Central American solidarity movement, where an affinity-group-based effort organized mass protests and non-violent arrests to challenge US involvement in Nicaragua. As part of those efforts, she organized city-wide non-violent trainings and facilitated large consensus-based decision-making meetings among affinity spokespeople. Singing, nature-based spiritual practices and working to develop a zero-net energy homestead in Vermont keep her going in these dangerous and miraculous times.

Don Hall is the founder and Executive Director of Transition Sarasota (http://transitionsarasota.org). Previously, he served as the Education and Outreach Coordinator for Transition Colorado, the first official Transition Initiative in North America and a statewide hub. Don holds a Master's in Environmental Leadership from Naropa University and is a certified Permaculture Designer.

Dylan Ryals-Hamilton practices and teaches Permaculture and sustainable design in Asheville, NC and throughout the southeast U.S. He has been an active member of Transition Asheville (TA) since the initiating group phase in early 2010, co-founding the TA Food Network in January 2011. Since then he has helped to forge important alliances and coalitions with nonprofits and grassroots organizations doing transition-related work throughout the French Broad river watershed, Katuah bioregion and beyond. He is the co-founder of the Permaculture In Action education model, a class format with a focus in hands-on practical implementation of sustainable land use and design. Working in the field of “Social Permaculture”, he has extensive training in group process and Dynamic Self Governance (aka Sociocracy) and Compassionate Communication (or Nonviolent Communication), and generally spends his free time exploring ways to apply permaculture principles to cultural repair and community collaboration. Dylan runs an ongoing apprenticeship program, wherein participants learn skills in Earth-based living, Transition, and community organizing. He is a member of the Asheville Food Policy Council, Buncombe County Fruits and Nuts Club, and has helped to initiate and organize several community gardens as well as edible plantings in public spaces. He is a co-founder of the Southeast Permaculture Trade Association, a professionals’ guild (forming in 2012) with an emphasis on collaboration, education, and public outreach. He is the current editor of Transition Asheville’s e-newsletter and manages the TA website. He is leading efforts to strengthen collaboration between Transition efforts throughout the region. He holds a Permaculture Design Certificate from the Ashevillage Institute, a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from Duke University, and many invaluable experiences from the school of trial and error.

Mr. Brown has helped to rewrite public policy through the Transportation Equity Network (WIN) that revised federal guidelines regarding public participation and transportation equity. He recently helped designed a web-based environmental/energy reduction tool that teaches community residents how to strategically and pragmatically reduce their energy use through weatherization efforts, retrofits, alternative energy practices and monitoring energy use; creating models for green sustainable communities-via the Imagine Larimer Software and the use of SMART Board technology. A frequent speaker, trainer, coach, mentor, and consultant; Mr. Brown has a BS in Education from Indiana University of PA, MSW from the University of Pittsburgh, and was a doctoral candidate working on a PhD in SW and a MPH from the University of Pittsburgh.

Jon Freise (Fry-zee) co-founded the Corcoran GROWS Transition Initiative in Minneapolis Minnesota and helped transform it from a group of neighbors meeting in a living room into a 501c3 organization. Corcoran GROWS (Grass Roots Opens Ways of Sustainability) has put on fairs, hosted speakers, held neighborhood dances, created huge public art projects, and organized permaculture and reskilling courses. Jon now works city-wide raising awareness, helping new initiatives get up and running, forming partnerships, locating funding, and cross connecting people passionate about Transition- with a good dose of celebrating mixed in!Jon brings an engineer's problem solving perspective to the coming energy transition. He enjoys learning and sharing ideas and innovations for powering down our need for fossil fuels. Jon has written articles for The Oil Drum on natural gas supplies and EROeI (energy returned on energy invested). Jon's pre-transition career has focused on robotics and the design of commercial color printers. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science.

Karen Lanphear EdD is a co-founder of the Sandpoint Transition Initiative. She believes that the power of education and the strength of building strong community coalitions can really change the world. She has worked the entire spectrum of education from setting up early childhood education programs to helping design a community college system in the Middle East. Karen has worked to develop and coordinate community coalitions, co-authored 3 travel books and had the good fortune to travel most of the world. She knows there are many ways to do things and that each community has an enormous pool of talent and power that can be unleashed when people start working together on a common vision, and start harnessing their resources to move in a new direction. Karen is working with the Global Ecovillage Network and Gaia University to expand her knowledge and skills to offer more effective tools for community development.

Maggie Seeley consults with clients (solar company, paper manufacturer, machine shop, architecture firm) on incorporating the Triple Bottom Line (people: social equity; profit; economic prosperity and planet: ecological responsibility) in their business decision-making. UNICEF and Motorola convinced her consulting company to help them in China. Fina and Elf Oil brought her team to Nigeria. She is a community activist in New Mexico about water issues, micro credit and community building. At the world level, she is a citizen facilitator. Maggie loves to learn from her sustainability students at the University of New Mexico. They have taught her about grey water systems, biodiesel processors and how to put a 60 vendor Farmer's Market on campus.

Mark Juedeman grew up on a ranch in Montana where he acquired a life-long commitment to the natural world and environmentalism. He retired from a 30+ year career as a geophysicist in 2010 so that he could devote his time to volunteer service. He and his family lived for many years in New Orleans where he was active in historic preservation, bicycle advocacy, education, the environmental non-profit The Green Project, and obtaining personal experience with renewable energy technologies such as small wind and PV. Mark obtained a Permaculture Design Certificate in 2009 after being displaced to Houston by Hurricane Katrina. He is a founding member of Transition Houston, a member of the executive committee of the Houston Food Policy Workgroup, serves on the board of Urban Harvest, teaches with the Permaculture Guild of Houston, and is a lecturer at the University of Houston. Mark became a certified US Transition LAUNCH instructor in 2012.

Michelle Colussi is the Manager of the Technical Assistance Division with the Canadian Center for Community Renewal (CCCR), a Canadian based organization working in the field of community economic development. Michelle has worked in education, recreation, with youth at risk, in mental health, the arts and as a board and business trainer. Michelle has an extensive background in rural development projects, multi-stakeholder facilitation and board/leadership development in the non-profit sector. She brings her background in drama and her humour to her work. She was a key staff member in the development of the Community Resilience Manual that CCCR developed and recently adapted for the Government of Botswana's poverty reduction strategy. As part of her role with Transition Victoria, Michelle is working with a team, adapting the Resilience Tool and the (UK) Transition Streets program for their Building Resilient Neighborhoods Project. In her consulting practice, Michelle is currently focused on various projects related to community resilience, social enterprise development, and facilitating Transition and Collective Impact workshops.

Pamela Boyce Simms, a change agent and public speaker for over 25 years, offers Transition Initiatives an experiential understanding of how groups can work when at their best. She invites people to listen deeply to each other, and to discern what is emerging in the group field. A veteran of organizational development and team building, Pamela helps initiatives work toward a progressive mastery of group dynamics that is essential to the long term traction, momentum and success of Transition towns. She adapts her expertise with a suite of facilitation tools, consensus building, systems development, and change management technologies to the needs of specific groups and organizations.

Boyce Simms is a proponent of group work that transforms anger and despair into compassion toward neighbors, communities and the environment. She seeks to cultivate a felt sense of interconnectedness that can see communities through the challenges ahead. Her intent is to affirm how working with the pain of the world can be a vehicle for self and community transformation.

One of seven original initiators of Woodstock Transition in Ulster County, New York, Pamela now convenes the Mid--Atlantic Transition Hub (MATH), a six-state consortium of Transitioners that facilitates the collaboration of Transition initiatives throughout the region. She also directs the Woodstock Timebank and serves on the Board of the Hudson Valley Current; both alternative local currencies.

Boyce Simms holds a BSFS from Georgetown University's Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service, a Matrise de Lettres (MA) de L'Universite de Dakar, Senegal, West Africa, is a Certified NLP Master Practitioner, and does Post Graduate work at the C.G. Jung Institute, NY.

Rebecca is the founder and chair of the Bridge, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting ecological, social and personal well-being in Tampa. She helps to organize events that raise awareness, build community and catalyze action to bring forth a sustainable region. Rebecca became a certified transition trainer in 2012 and she is actively involved in the Transition Tampa Steering Group. She is a psychotherapist with a strong interest in eco-psychology and the "inner transition".

Growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia gave (sarah) Zahner a core foundation for community yet left her with a yearning to see the world outside the "picket fence". After studying anthropology, she took off for California and Vermont to serve as an Americorps *VISTA volunteer. Through this experience of seeing how other people lived really opened Zahner's eyes to living more consciously with the world rather than haphazardly in the world. She has dedicated her career to relationship building and now conducts a train the trainer program in de-escalation. She's learning and growing as she builds community in Milwaukee where she found her family of friends through Transition Milwaukee. Her belief in community and the transition movement led her to become a Transition Trainer. Her search for what is outside the "picket fence" has now shifted to building community inside the "picket fence" where she's found all that she needs.

Scott McKeown is the founder and long-time core team member of Transition Sebastopol, which in 2008 became the 9th official Transition initiative in the US and developed to include many active working groups. Scott has been a professional trainer and instructional designer for over fifteen years in both corporate high-tech environments and with non-profit organizations such as the Buckminster Fuller Institute. Scott became a certified Transition US “Training for Transition” instructor in 2008 and has co-taught the Transition training course in many communities throughout California as well as in New England. Since March 2011, Scott has held the position of Transition US Training Coordinator and has overseen the Transition US training program and a network of Transition trainers throughout the US.

She holds a BS. in Psychology, a Permaculture Teacher’s Certificate, and an MSc. degree in Organizing Learning for EcoSocial Regeneration from Gaia University, where for 3 years she offered her skills as a Process Advisor and Internal Reviewer for students around the world.

Her book, Honoring All Life - A Practical Guide to Exploring a New Reality, was published in 2005. Her Deep Perception workshops have been offered in the USA and Europe. She is both a Systems Thinker and Systems Modeler, trained on ISEE Systems STELLA and iTHINK software.

Simon is a community organizer who believes that the level of our collective conscious is the bottom line with regard to our ability to adapt to the conditions of the 21st century. He spent the late 90's and early 00's founding and directing a non-profit service organization that organizes volunteers to address urgently needed home repair projects for elderly and disabled people in the community. (www.coverhomerepair.org) Since then he as worked as an organizational consultant (www.transformationalpractice.org) and a community organizer, co-founding Transition Town White River Junction (www.ttwrj.org) and a residential sustainability center called The Center for Transformational Practice, where he currently resides (www.sustainablepractice.net). He spent the past year in Haridwar, India, volunteering and writing with a popular social movement that applies the Vedic spiritual science to address the needs of rural Indians. (www.awgp.org) Since returning three months ago, he was elected to the Select Board for the Town of Hartford, Vermont. His hobbies include attending meetings, checking email and riding his bicycle.

Steve Chase is the founding director of Antioch University's environmental studies master's program in Advocacy for Social Justice and Sustainability. He teaches courses in Organizing Social Change, Political Economy and Sustainability; Leadership for Change; Diversity, Justice, and Inclusion; and Nonprofit Organizations and Social Entrepreneurship. A longtime community organizer, writer, speaker, and popular educator, Steve is very active with the international Transition Movement and is one of the co-founders of the Transition Keene Task Force--the 56th Transition Initiative in the United States and the first in New Hampshire. He is a trained facilitator for the Pachamama Alliance’s Awakening the Dreamer Initiative and is very active with the Putney Friends Meeting (a Quaker congregation) in nearby Vermont. He is a webeditor for Relocalization: The Keene Transition Movement Community Website and Blog and the Quakers In Transition website and blog for the Earthcare Ministries Committee of the New England Yearly Meeting of Friends. His latest book is Letters To A Fellow Seeker: A Short Introduction To The Quaker Way and he is particularly interested in encouraging interfaith participation in the Transition Movement."

Susal Stebbins Collins has been an environmental, peace, and social justice activist since 1977, beginning in the anti-nuclear power and alternative energy movement. Her work has included citizen advocacy and lobbying; community, organization and coalition building; meditation and deep listening; writing, editing, photography, and publications design; and teaching and training. She has lived and worked in a wide diversity of communities in the US and in Nepal. She currently teaches a course in social justice at Keene State College in New Hampshire; serves at Contemplative Life Advisor (connecting mindfulness meditation with social justice and sustainability) at Hampshire College in Massachusetts; serves on a Community Restorative Justice Panel in Brattleboro, Vermont; works in the Transition movement as a Transition Trainer in New England and a member of the Initiating Group in her home of Dummerston, Vermont; and grows vegetables in her backyard.

Since becoming a Certified Transition Trainer in 2008, Tina has worked with over 120 Transition communities, given 42 of the official Transition weekend courses in the U.S. and Canada, and provided hundreds of Transition presentations. Prior to doing Transition work full-time, Tina had been a trainer, program director and consultant for 25 years, supporting and guiding leaders in over 400 local, national, regional and local organizations. In Washington, D.C., she directed citizen training programs for 17 national faith communities, and she directed Greenpeace USA's national citizen Activist Network. After moving to Massachusetts she directed the Veterans Education Project, the Western Mass Funding Resource Center, and a training program on personal financial management. She founded and led campaigns on energy, environmental justice and toxins for New England Clean Water Action. Most recently she was a consultant with 350.org, the Massachusetts Municipal Association, and the Sustainability Institute. Tina has an M.A. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago, a B.A. in Urban Studies from Macalester College, and is certified for mediation and consensus decision-making facilitation. Her passive solar, Platinum LEED, low-toxic, largely locally-built "Power House" won the Massachusetts utility company-sponsored competition, the Zero Energy Challenge, and the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association’s 2010 Zero Net Energy Award www.ZeroEnergyPowerHouse.com. Tina provides free phone support to Transition Initiatives. Reach her at: 413-658-8165, TinaClarke@TransitionNetwork.org.